“I don’t know,” said the unhappy youth. He was grateful to the old fellow for not looking him in the eye, like a witness-teaser, as he asked the question, yet he longed to kick him out of the barn and lock the doors, so that there would be one less place for the enemy to lie in wait. He returned to the house, and entered the kitchen just in time to hear a feminine neighbor say,-- “I s’pose he’ll wear his new clothes--them that Sol Mantring fetched word about--to church on Sunday?” Phil abruptly got an axe and went to the wood-lot; his first impulse was to take his gun, but half in jest and half in earnest he told himself that he would not dare to have arms in his hands if the torment was to continue. Yet even while in the depths of the ancestral forest he was not safe, for, on the hollow pretence of tracking a dog who had been stealing sheep, a neighbor followed Phil to the woods, found him by the tell-tale blows of the axe, and had him at his mercy for a full hour: the visitor had mentally set apart a half-day for the work. “There’s one way o’ gettin’ rid of this raft o’ people,” said Mrs. Hayn, who rapidly became as indignant as her son at the persistency with which people brought Lucia’s name into conversation. “One would s’pose that the world had got back to the way it was in old Father Adam’s day, as far as gals was concerned, an’ there was only one female that anybody could take a notion to. They come a-pesterin’ the life out o’ me, just as if I knowed any more about it than they do,--which I don’t.” Then the anxious mother looked slyly, and somewhat reproachfully, at her son, who flushed and said,-- “Tell us the way of getting out of it, mother, and at least one of your children will arise and call you blessed.” “Why, it’s to have the minister an’ his wife to tea. It’s manners, an’ pretty much everybody knows it, not to disturb anybody the day they’re goin’ to have the minister.” “Let’s have him,” said Phil, eagerly; “I’ll do anything to help you get ready,--beat eggs, stone raisins,--anything but go to the store for nutmegs and be caught by the proprietor and all his customers. Say, mother, why can’t you invite the other ministers too, on successive days?” “You _will_ wear your new clothes, though, when the minister comes, won’t you?” asked the old lady, with some timidity. “You know I hain’t seen ’em on you yet, an’ I’m a-dyin’ to, though I hain’t liked to put you to the trouble of dressin’ up on purpose, knowin’ how men hate to try things on.”